The right to health-care and the regionalization of the health-care system

Excerpt

In Italy, the process of decentralization of the health-care organization was given a strong boost during the last decade of the twentieth century, according to some inspiring lines of the Law itself, which established in 1978 the National Healthcare Service. Regions were given more and more autonomy and legislative powers in this field, so that they gained a substantial role in programming, organizing and managing health care services. The new Article 117 of the Constitution, adopted in 2001, made it explicit that health protection is a matter of concurring legislation, with the clarification that in such matters the State, which maintains exclusive powers with regard to the determination of the basic level of benefits relating to civil and social entitlements, is given the role to lay down only the fundamental principles. As a consequence, the role of the State – as it is affirmed on the website of the Italian Ministry of Health – has changed into a function of warrantor of fairness, building on the concept of the essential levels of assistance which ought to be guaranteed throughout the national territory. …